You Do Something to Me
by ScaramoucheJay
Summary: I'm hanging on the wire, for a love I'll never find...


**Author's Note: This is a bit like a reworked version of my original story Lone Wolf, because basically I think that it needs fiddling with, and blah. So yeah… This should also sit more inline with Sirius Black and his Quest for the Pop Tart and act as the promised prequel for Unintended this way. **

**Disclaimer: Do not own anyone from this universe; they are eluding all my attempts to capture them. Sneaky little things… Anyone who as not been featured in a Harry Potter book is mine, my own… This beautiful song belongs to Paul Weller. I think I love him.**

**You Do Something To Me  
Scaramouche Jay**

_You do something to me, something deep inside  
I'm hanging on the wire, for a love I'll never find_

The light was fading rapidly, a sure sign that winter was here at last and here to stay. He was curled up on the window ledge of the Gryffindor Common Room, reading, his light honey brown hair falling into his eyes, his brow was furrowed. It was a sure fire sign that he was thinking. To the less educated viewer it would appear that he was thinking about his book, heavy and leather bound and resting in his lap. He was not. His gaze skimmed the top of the gilt pages, gazing past the candles suspended all around the edge of the common room and beyond the heavy wooden clock that struck the hour. His gaze rested on a bent chestnut head in the corner, a silken curtain of hair, which hid the Potions homework its owner was engrossed in. But he didn't care that she was doing Potions homework.

She lifted her head slightly, reaching out her nail-bitten fingers to flip over a page in her textbook. She yawned and the skin across her forehead puckered and folded, her eyes screwing shut. He glanced back down at his book. It was by a muggle, called Hans Christian Anderson. It had somehow found it's way into Magical Creatures section of the library, as it claimed to be a book about mermaids. But they were no mermaids that he had ever heard of or seen. She died at the end of it, the mermaid. She died for her prince. He thought this highly noble, but exceedingly impractical. He couldn't imagine that anyone could be that consumed with love. But maybe he was just cynical; his condition was prone to making him that way. He shut the book.

_You do something wonderful, then chase it all away  
Mixing my emotions, throws me back again_

Her candle was burning low on the table before her, barely flickering anymore, dripping the last of it's wax onto the top of her parchment. But she didn't notice. Her pointed white teeth were chewing on her bottom lip, a sure fire sign that she was thinking. To the less educated viewer she was deeply engrossed in her homework, the quills and textbooks scattered across the desk. She was not. Her face was hidden behind the mess of wavy, unruly hair that fell in a knotted screen between her and the rest of the common room. She peered at him out of the corner of her eye. Her gaze was partially obscured by the hair that hung between them, but she could see that he had been reading from the muggle book he had found days ago. She was surprised he hadn't finished it before. He was sitting beside the window, and she worried that he might catch cold.

He sneezed, his hand flying up to his nose and his eyes screwing shut. He didn't have a tissue and instead, sniffed loudly, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down further and leaning his head back against the wall. She turned back to her Potions homework. It was something about the properties of the lovelorn lotharius, a flower that was a potent ingredient in love potions. She hadn't believed that there was one before that. Silly and superstitious she thought. She supposed she had to believe in them now though, as McNasty wasn't about to accept an essay entitled, 'This doesn't exist you mad old coot'. Maybe she just didn't like to think of people forced to love against their will. Everyone should be with whom they chose. Even if that meant you got hurt.

_Hanging on the wire, I'm waiting for the change  
Dancing through the fire, just to catch a flame  
Feel real again_

Looking around the common room it was clear that it was late. The overstuffed armchairs and sofas basked in the dying fire, free from any bottoms but those of a straggling couple and several first years that were frantically scribbling across rolls of parchment. He looked around himself lazily, rising to his feet and stretching out his long lithe limbs. The clock struck midnight and he knew that he should sleep. He should sleep. He didn't move to the staircase though. Instead he tucked his book under his arm and moved across to the fireplace, settling himself in one of the, now vacant, plump red chairs. He sank into its softness, his back sighing with relief after the cold hardness of the window ledge and his legs tingling as they began to thaw.

He rested his head against the back of the chair, feeling its scratchiness through his hair and down his neck, the fire's glow lighting up his face. He couldn't see her from hear of course, but his head was telling him it was a good thing. He was finding it difficult to believe it. He closed his eyes.

It was some time before he opened them again, the softness and warmth lulling him into dreamless sleep. But when he did wake the room was empty, the fire dying away to embers. Blinking, he stood, dazed. He had a crick in his neck and his arm had gone numb due to him leaning on it for too long. Rubbing his neck he started to walk towards the staircase and his bed.

But he wasn't as alone as he thought he was.

Hunched over her table in the corner of the room, she sat, her face hiding behind her chestnut mane where she had fallen asleep on the desk.

He stared at her for a long time, studying the way her back rose and fell with each breath, the way it arched, unsure why he was doing so. Hesitantly he walked towards her and stood behind her left shoulder, uncertain what he should do next. Should he leave her or wake her? Would she want to be woken? Eventually he shyly reached out a hand and tapped her shoulder softly. Her head snapped up and spun around. He took a step back.

She looked startled, but as she focused on him her face relaxed into an expression of recognition before tensing again in mild panic. He blinked at her with curiosity, licking his lips nervously.

"What time is it?" Her voice was small and embarrassed, "How long have I been asleep?"

He craned his neck to look at the clock. "Um…. Half past one, I've been asleep myself so I'm not sure when you..." he trailed off, suddenly self-conscious. The hairs on his arm stood on end, as he watched her shift in her chair, nearly brushing against him.

She was nodding, glancing down at the essay in front of her. She groaned. It wasn't complete.

He glanced at it himself, furrowing his brow. An unfinished Potions essay was a one-way ticket to a detention from hell. He stepped around the table, pulling out the chair opposite her and flipping the parchment to face him. He seized a quill and began to write.

_Hanging on the wire, said I'm waiting for the change  
Dancing through the fire, just to catch a flame  
Feel real again_

She watched him, a mixture of confusion and relief in her eyes. She thought that she should probably stop him, but found that her words died in her throat, and her arms lay heavy on the table. The candlelight danced over his face as her quill in his hand moved across the paper, filling it slowly, then quickly, line by line. His script was flowing, cursive and beautiful, each line surer and more fluid than the last, the lines of thought standing out starkly against the soft orange glow the candle threw on his face. She watched him for what seemed like moments, but must have been hours. And when he put the final stop on the page, she saw that an hour had gone past, neither saying anything, just sitting alone, together, reflected in the dark wood of the table.

He looked up.

"Finished."

She took the sheet from in front of him, her eyes falling from his face to the sheet before her. He had freckles along the top of his cheekbones.

Each and every page of his loopy, even script was beautiful and lucent. She didn't even think about what it said, she just admired the shapes he had made for her.

He was chewing his lip again, a troubled look behind his eyes. He didn't know why he had written for her. He didn't know how he had written for her. All he knew was that right now he was envious of the paper for holding her gaze.

But then she looked up.

"Perfect."

_You do something to me, somewhere deep inside  
I'm hoping to get close to, a peace I cannot find_

He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, both seated at the table, a sheet of parchment between them saying nothing, doing nothing. He wasn't sure it mattered. All he was sure of was that he couldn't move, he couldn't speak, he couldn't breathe too loudly. It was the sort of moment you want to scoop up and place in your pocket, just so you can look back on it in the days to come and know you weren't dreaming.

He knew he must have broken it though, as he moved first, pushing his chair back suddenly, lifting his book and walking across the room to the place where the staircases began reaching up into the darkness of the tower. Away from the moment, away from the heat. He knew that his breath had caught in his throat as he stood at the foot of the staircase, the cool air of the stonewalls without fires meeting his flushed face, and causing him to stop, his hand on the rail and close his eyes, pausing.

Her eyes were on his back.

And this was when he knew that the time for doing what was right was gone. It was the time for doing only what felt right. And that was when he turned back to her, and without smiling moved to the sofa. It was then that she followed him to the sofa, and she sat beside him, without him communicating this desire to her. It was when she didn't speak and he didn't speak. They just watched the fire, and tried hard not to think about the way that two centimetres of space between two people on a sofa can feel like endless prairies. The way that the atmosphere in these centimetre prairies can crackle like fire. The way everything can feel so still, and so buzzing at anyone time.

They thought about, though they did not know it, how intimacy can be so much more than touching. It can be wanting to know about someone what no one else knows. It can be wanting to tell someone about what no one else knows.

And this is why he spoke.

_Dancing through the fire, just to catch your flame  
Just to get close to, just close enough  
To tell you that…_

"What?"

He just looked at her, a mixture of apprehension and adrenalin coursing through his body, unsure whether he could believe what he had just said. He couldn't be sure that he wasn't panicking.

She stared back, a mixture of horror and surprise scratched into her skin. His smile began to falter. He fought to keep it in place. She looked away, into the fire, her eyes wide and confused.

There was no way to retreat, no way to bear it back.

"When?"

Her voice was small and confused, and her eyes still didn't look at him.

"I was five. In the woods by our house." His voice matched hers, shrinking back into him. His shoulders now hunched, ashamed.

She shut her eyes, and he hung his head, turning away from where she sat.

"Does… does she know?"

He shut his eyes.

"No."

The word hung in the air between them, held by invisible strings of tension.

She spoke first.

"Are you going to tell her?"

He hadn't thought about it. He couldn't imagine it. He never dreamed he would tell anyone else, hadn't meant to say anything tonight. It had been an accident.

"I don't think I could."

A silence descended on the pair, sitting before the fire, stretched out, its long curling fingers wrapped around their vocal chords, keeping them mute.

He stared into the dying embers of the fire, feeling more hollow than ever before. Far more hollow than when there was another lie about where he had been on the last full moon, why he had skipped classes. Far more hollow than when he knew another moon was coming to caress his crawling skin.

Empty.

Her fingers brushed his hair from his face, her eyes hesitant and confused. He looked at her. Just looked. Her lip was bleeding as she chewed it, as she stroked his face, once, twice, again and again as he looked, just looked at her.

"But why did you tell me? What can I do?"

She rose from where they sat, her fingers leaving his hair, and falling limply to her side.

"What do you want me to do?"

He did not speak. He could not speak. He had no answer. She could do nothing. She wasn't in any position to. He realised that now. He shouldn't have told her. But he couldn't imagine it that way.

"Thank you for your help," her voice was a whisper, the ghost of an echo.

He nodded.

That was when she hesitated, when she may or may not have touched his head with her fingertips, lingering for a second. He would never know. Her face disappeared from before him; her plain, ordinary face that had been made radiant by the firelight. She turned away, walking slowly and deliberately to the staircase, which she ascended steadily.

She might have looked back. She might have paused at the top of the stairs. She might have cried herself to sleep under the bedclothes, trying to muffle each pain-filled sob from her roommates. She might have pulled her legs to her heaving chest, her face hot, sweaty, sticky as the tears slid down her face as she tried to decide what to do, as she tried to convince herself she had done the right thing. Walking away was the right thing. The right thing.

But none of these things were of his concern. All he could think as he stared at the fading embers of the fire was that his chest felt like it was contorting, ripping. He began to yearn for the comfort of his transformations.

And over and over again all he could think was, why did I tell her? Why did I tell her? What made me think I could tell her? Why did I feel I could tell her? He couldn't answer the question of course. No seventeen-year-old boy could. But it was that feeling that she gave him. And he knew he felt it. He just didn't know how. He didn't know why.

Was it all that important?

_You do something to me,  
Something deep inside…_

**Author's Note: I'm sorry for the wait. I just hope that you think it was worth it. I hope that the situation in Unintended is a little better explained, and I hope that this doesn't align with Sirius Black and his Quest for the Pop Tart too obscurely. I hope more than anything you liked this. It is my baby, but criticism and compliment are equally appreciated. Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me.**


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